June 26, 2026

President’s Message By Amy Coco

When I took the gavel at Bench-Bar last June, I made a joke that Dave Blaner began his tenure as Executive Director with an Amy and would end it with one. Full circle. What I did not say then, because I was too busy being grateful that he had not retired before my year, was how much of this year would belong to him.

Dave became Executive Director of the ACBA in 2001, after serving seven years as Assistant Executive Director under Jim Smith. He has given this association more than 30 years. He encouraged presidents to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Under his leadership, the Institute for Gender Equality began in 2008. The Homer S. Brown Law Association joined the Allegheny County Bar Association as a Division in 2011. He helped build the bar foundation into what it is today. He repeatedly found ways for the ACBA to support itself through non-dues revenue. He served in leadership roles with the National Association of Bar Executives, and his work helped give the ACBA a national reputation.

When traveling with Dave to the National Conference of Bar Presidents and the Conference of Metropolitan Bar Associations, I saw other bar associations look to us for ideas they could take home and use. Dave earned the National Association of Bar Executives’ Bolton Award, the highest honor a bar executive can receive. He has trained, mentored, and quietly carried more presidents than any of us will ever count. I am the last on that list, and I have felt the difference every single day.

A president gets a year. An executive director gets the institution.

The themes I picked for this year, health and wellness, connection, and the rule of law, only became real programming because Dave and the staff he assembled knew how to turn ideas into events, committees, CLEs, communications, and community.

When I asked the Health and Wellness Committee to start small peer circles so lawyers could find one another around shared circumstances, Dave’s team made it happen. The Sandwich Generation circle, the Cancer Survivors circle, the Runners circle, the Parents of Children with Special Needs circle and more all exist because the staff did the work of recruiting, scheduling, and welcoming people in. The Mindful Lawyer CLE on secondhand trauma and sustainable practice drew a real audience. The decision to put an ACBA team in the Pittsburgh Half Marathon came from the committee, but it became a real thing because the staff said yes and made the logistics disappear.

When the retention election arrived in November and judicial independence felt fragile, the ACBA showed up. Our Judiciary Committee ratings reached voters through Spotlight PA, WESA, KDKA, and the major dailies. The Ad Hoc Committee on the Rule of Law and the Independence of the Judiciary got off the ground and began the patient work of educating lawyers and the public about why these institutions matter. None of that happens without an executive director who treats the association’s voice as a serious public asset and protects it accordingly.

This was also a year of connection. We welcomed new admittees at the admission ceremony.  We congratulated Chief Judge Mark Hornyak on his term, and welcomed Chief Judge Cathy Bissoon. The MLK Prayer Breakfast remains one of the best things this Association does.The Lunch with the Judges brought our bench and bar together again. The Semiquincentennial CLE on the Pennsylvania Provincial Conference reminded us where our Commonwealth’s rights tradition began.

Our membership work mattered, too. Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Quatrini Law Group, free law student membership has opened the doors of the ACBA to the next generation of lawyers. We now have nearly 1,000 law student members, and the Young Lawyers Division has welcomed them in with events and programming. That is not just a membership statistic. It is an investment in the future of this profession and this association.

Under Dave’s leadership, and through the work of incoming President-Elect Erin Lucas Hamilton, the Legacy Lawyers Committee also began. That effort reflects something important about the ACBA: we are at our best when we honor the lawyers who built this community while also making room for the lawyers who will carry it forward.

The Lawyers Journal kept publishing. The committees kept meeting. The Pittsburgh Legal Journal came out every business day. CLEs were planned, members were welcomed, sponsors were thanked, questions were answered, and problems were solved before most of us ever knew there had been a problem. That steady drumbeat is the Executive Director’s signature, and most members never see the hand behind it.

Bench-Bar this year is also Dave’s farewell. He would prefer I not dwell on that. He would prefer we just enjoy the weekend at Seven Springs and not make a fuss. I am going to make a fuss anyway, because 35 years of building something deserves more than a polite goodbye.

Dave, on behalf of the presidents who have leaned on you, and the more than 5,000 members who have benefited from your work whether they realized it or not, thank you. Thank you for taking the calls. Thank you for the institutional memory. Thank you for protecting this association’s reputation, finances, and mission through every economic cycle, every judicial election, every difficult moment, every pandemic (let’s hope we keep that to one), and every president’s well-meaning new idea. Thank you for telling me, more than once and always kindly, when an idea needed more thought. Thank you for telling me, just as often, that an idea would work and that you would help me get it there.

To Tom Petropoulos, who steps into the role next, you have an excellent foundation and an excellent team. To the staff, you have been the engine of everything good this year. I knew you would be. You proved it.

To the Board of Governors, the officers, the committee, division, and section chairs, and the members who showed up for events large and small, thank you. To Dan Fitzsimmons, the gavel, and the tiara, are yours soon. The association is in good shape for your year.

To my family, especially Jeff, Cameron, and Jordan, thank you for the year of patience and shared calendars. Putting on my own oxygen mask first only works because you are next to me.

And to Dave, one last time: enjoy Florida. We will miss you more than we can say.